The Milk & Honey Blog

you have to listen to this guy; his name is Asaf Avidan, he lives in Israel and sings only in English…

Today is Israel’s official Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the 6 million Jews murdered in the holocaust. This day as always been a hard one for me, all four of my grandparents are holocaust survivors and I always felt it is essential for me to remember and learn what happened there, to keep my family history alive. Since moving to NYC life has taken a different pace and sometimes just dealing with day to day issues turns me off track and makes me forgetful… So I would like to recommend a book: MAUS: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman. MAUS (winner of the 1992 Pulitzer prize) MAUS is a graphic novel telling the story of the author’s father’s survival of the Holocaust.  It is also the tale of Spiegelman’s strained relationship with his father, and his attempt to come to terms with his dad, himself, and the truths of the Holocaust. In the books mice are Jews, pigs are Poles, and cats are Nazi’s.  It takes the older Spiegelman from rich factory owner, to a Jewish ghetto, to Auschwitz, and home.  With my love to animation, I found that pictures were able to bring to life in an always relevant way the life in war and felt reconnected to my family’s history, especially my grandmother an Auschwitz survivor. I recommend this book to everyone; it is difficult to digest at times but is able to hit the spot and would make a great read for a day like today.

An unlikely material for accessories and gift items, polymeric clay is what Sami and Adi use to create their line of gorgeous creations called Adina Plastalina. Sami and Adi lovingly describe their collection as an inspired smile. The collection boasts inspired elements and bold imaginative colors. The items are perfect for those of us with a joie de vivre and a naughty charm. For more from Sami and Adi check out the Adina Plastalina website.

Israeli artist, David Gerstein, created this large metal, painted sculpture, Momentum, for the heart of the business district in Singapore. Momentum measures nearly 61 feet (18.5 meters) high and weighs over 97,000 lbs (44 tons). There was an initial investment of over $2 million to develop the sculpture. Momentum depicts an upward cycle of progress, symbolizing the energy and momentum of the district, Singapore and its people. To best illustrate the title of the piece, one layer of the sculpture was revealed every Friday until the final figure was revealed at 7:00pm New Year’s Eve 2007. The spiral like sculpture has 175 colorful figures ascending to the top where one figure holds the spiral.